The St. Louis Blues were supposed to heading to the Century Grill for a team meal Saturday after leaving Rexall Place, before flying to Calgary but did they really need to eat twice?

They’d already chewed up the Edmonton Oilers and spit them out.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Oilers TEAM. The cavalry isn’t coming. They’ve not used excuses–good on them–but nobody can say they’re getting their butts kicked because they, say, have injuries to Taylor Hall or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Andrew Ference or Jordan Eberle. This is their lineup, for better or worse, as we approach the halfway point (38 games) in the schedule and can it get any worse than 6-zip at home, booed off the ice again?This is now 3-0 (Dallas), 4-0 (Toronto), 5-0 (Detroit) and this one at Rexall Place in the first 17 games here.

They didn’t have Mark Arcobello (ribs) and Ryan Jones (blow to his head that knocked him out in practice Saturday morning) and sat Philip Larsen on defence for Corey Potter as a No. 6 guy, but, again, they can’t say they’ve got too many guys seeing the team doctor as, say, Pittsburgh can or the Red Wings . Again, what you see is what you get if you’re an Oiler fan.

They shot their bolt in the first 20 minutes, outshooting the Blues 14-5 with maybe their best first-period of the year at home, but trailed 1-0 on a risky play that went bad by goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, who made the mistake early and an awful one late–on the first trying to clear the puck up the boards that Chris Stewart finished off with a virtual empty-netter and the last one when Patrik Berglund’s muffin hit the goalie in the mitt and tumbled into the net.

After the first period when Blues’ goalie Brian Elliott stopped everything and the Oilers will to win seemed to dissipate as it often does with a fragile team, the visitors maybe got a mouthful from coach Ken Hitchcock, or he got out the ruler to rap some knuckles, because they went and suffocated the Oilers 28-9 on the shot-clock after that, with four goals in the third, and they did it without their best player Alexander Steen. He appeared to hurt his leg but Hitchcock wasn’t offering a medical update.

“We owed this one to our goalie,” said Hitchcock.

“Our goalie was our best player. We’ve had some starts like this, some we’ve recovered from, some we haven’t We were disappointed after I thought we’d turned the corner in the Montreal game (5-1 on Thursday in St. Louis) but the old stuff came back in the first period (they were outchanced by Elliott’s reckoning 11-2). We snapped to attention in the second and third periods,” said Hitchcock.

Stewart had three goals on four shots, which gives him eight goals on his last 12 shots.

He’s probably right. The Zamboni driver probably could have scored his three. The first when Jaden Schwartz intercepted Bryzgalov’s clear and fed Stewart, the second 106 seconds into the third from the slot off a sweet feed from from Berglund, the third when Derek Roy sent a pass through the skates of an Oilers’ defender right to Stewart.

Again, eight goals in his last 12 shots? “Guess I better keep shooting,” he chuckled.

The first one where Bryzgalov’s attempt to move it failed, Stewart’s eyes were as big as man-hole covers. “I came off the bench and was praying Schwartzie saw me,” he said.

Two more in the third and he had his third career hat-trick. He had no goals in 10 October games, but has 13 in his last 25, and eight in his last six. “After the first month I decided I wasn’t going to pass up any more chances, who has 19 points in the same 25 games.

“It’s the continuity with that line (Roy and Morrow),” said Hitchcock. “Three weeks ago they weren’t automatic, but now there’s great reads. They know where Brenden’s going to be and where Derek’s going to be. From the red-line in they were great.”

“In the first month, he (Stewart) was guilty of making the next play, now he’s just going into the shooting areas and firing away. His release is unbelieveable. We spent some one-on-one time with him and got him to change his mind-set, too, in the value in checking, rather than just score goals. As he started to value checking, he started to get odd-man rushes and goals,” said Hitchcock.

Could Stewart see the Oilers getting discouraged?

“Yeah, I think so. They’ve got some high-end talent…the more time you can make them spend in their zone, it can be frustrating,” he said.

And it doesn’t get more frustrating than six losses in a row and six goals in that time, three shutouts in their last five games. Twenty-three goals for the teams they played.

Again, this is their team, no reinforcements coming.GM Craig MacTavish has traded Ladislav Smid for a good young prospect goalie Laurent Brossoit who may play on the team when the new building is up and running, backup goalie Jason LaBarbera for futures and farmhand Linus Omark for a conditional sixth-round draft pick in June.

It doesn’t appear MacTavish is making any blockbusters anytime soon (he’d have to move Hall, or RNH or Eberle for that to happen and he’s not going to do that) and,, for the most part because it’s almost impossible to make a deal in this tight cap world. MacTavish can’t even shuffle some deck chairs with a minor trade. It appears he will wait until March 5 when he has a raft of UFA’s–Ales Hemsky, both goalies, Bryzgalov and Devan Dubnyk, Nick Schultz and Potter on defence, Ryan Smyth and Jones. His phone will be ringing then.

Until then, it’s plainly obvious the Oilers are flat-out not good enough. They have beaten three teams–Montreal, Colorado and New Jersey–in the playoffs. They have been beaten by three or more goals 11 times. Enough of the negative stuff.

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